


it's getting late, it's getting dark (in the end of the night I can feel your warmth)

by girlsarewolves



Series: exchanges [38]
Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femslash, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Implied Nell/Luke, Incest, Mental Instability, Non-Graphic Smut, Post-Canon, Sibling Incest, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26258905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: Theo’s been to Hill House too many times, it’s become routine. Gloved fingers squeeze the wheel of her car before she finally opens the door and steps out. There’s always a mist laying heavy over the grounds at night, but she can see well enough the path to the door.Hill House is glowing with soft, yellow lamplight peering through the windows and the cracks. The locked doors creak open for her.After all, she’s expected.
Relationships: Eleanor "Nell" Crain/Theodora "Theo" Crain
Series: exchanges [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1269893
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33
Collections: RelationShipping 2020





	it's getting late, it's getting dark (in the end of the night I can feel your warmth)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy! I tried not to go too deep into the angst/grief aspect but also tried to keep the aura of trauma and past coming back to haunt you (literally) of the show. Also included some minor implied Luke/Nell since you mentioned in your letter you were okay with that. :)

* * *

  
  


_ Park the car, turn off the ignition. Take slow, deep breaths. Watch the porch light blink, beckoning. Take a breath.  _

Theo’s been to Hill House too many times, it’s become routine. Gloved fingers squeeze the wheel of her car before she finally opens the door and steps out. There’s always a mist laying heavy over the grounds at night, but she can see well enough the path to the door.

Hill House is glowing with soft, yellow lamplight peering through the windows and the cracks. The locked doors creak open for her. 

After all, she’s expected.

Theo doesn’t look at the dead eyes and open mouths watching her. Doesn’t touch the decaying bones of the monster that shapes itself as a home. She walks the familiar way to the library, where blood has stained deep into the rugs and sunk into the foundation, where the spiral staircase lays out like a waiting tongue.

“You need to stop coming here,” Nell whispers. She’s standing right beside Theo, like she walked the hallways with her, wasn’t already there, waiting. “You need to move on.”

“You’re right.” Of course her sister is right. Theo and the others had encouraged the same with Nell after Arthur died. Are still encouraging Luke now the Nell and their father died. It’s what they all had to do after their mother died. It’s what Theo helps so many children she sees do. Let go of destructive behaviors. Find healthy coping mechanisms. Move on.

But Theo can’t move on.

The gloves come off. She lets them fall on the floor, closes her eyes and just breathes when Nell’s cold fingers reach for hers. Takes in that wrong feeling of flesh that’s alive, that’s not too soft from rot, giving way to brittle bone. Takes in that wrong feeling of something that should be nothing.

Theo opens her eyes and takes Nell’s face in her hands and feels. Just feels. Feels sorrow and despair and peace and loneliness and acceptance and all the things that Nell’s empty body didn’t possess anymore, and takes comfort in that.

The hungry maw of Hill House somehow seems better than the nothingness. 

“One of these times, you might not leave,” Nell whispers. 

She doesn’t talk about their mother, waiting in the belly of the beast, waiting and always wanting, infected with that never satisfied hunger that collects and collects and never lets go, never lets those it claims leave, even when they’re dust in the ground. She doesn’t talk about Poppy, the cruelest and flightiest, the one who spreads the sickness even though it’s long left her without any feeling at all, if she ever had any. 

She doesn’t have to.

“Maybe. Risk I’m going to take. Worked out pretty well for the Dudleys.” Theo closes her eyes again and leans in. Presses her mouth to Nell’s, lips on lips, a sin. She never believed in sin. She never believed in much of anything, beyond what she felt, but then Hill House and the sins of the mother and the sins of the father came back to haunt her. She never felt that what she is, who she is, is a sin. But this…

“If you think it’s wrong, why are you here?” Nell asks. She isn’t speaking, her lips are moving with Theo’s, kissing back. But her voice is there in Theo’s ear all the same. 

_ If you think it’s wrong why are you here? _

Theo doesn’t have an answer. Not a pretty one, anyway. Not a sane one. Not a healthy one. At least she’s self aware enough to know. She thinks about Luke ditching rehab a week before Nell’s wedding and showing up high. She thinks about asking him if he ever comes here, and the way he couldn’t hold her gaze when he said no. She thinks about asking Nell if Luke visits and what he wants and Nell just smiling sadly and saying, “What do you want?”

Sometimes wrong is what keeps you alive. Sometimes wrong is all you can cling to that feels familiar. A constant that you’ve grown too dependent on, a drug that’s infected every cell of your body, until being without is worse than the slow acting poison of with.

“Do you not want this?” Theo asks. Her words are breathless and throaty from lust, from a quickening pulse and racing heart and a heavy throbbing between her legs. She wants this, wants it so badly she thinks she might be ill if she doesn’t get it, and maybe in that way she understands Hill House and its constant ravenous cravings.

But if Nell says no, she’s gone. She’s out and never coming back.

“I want you,” Nell whispers. Her voice is soft but steady. There’s no edge of breathiness in her words, but the need is there all the same. She answers the same every time. Because Nell gives. She gives and gives, and takes them in, takes the pieces they give and offers parts of herself in return. She always has. 

They writhe in a tangle of dusty sheets in Theo’s old bed. The covers pulled up like naughty children staying up too late. There’s no clumsy fumbling to the room, just falling to the library floor and landing on the creaky mattress.

Hill House is considerate in that way.

In the morning, in the light of day, Nell is gone. Theo wakes with a crick in her neck and a sore back and a sinful contentment that makes it easy to ignore the stiffness. She dresses, grabs her gloves left for her on the bedside table, and slides them on. Rubs the sleep from her eyes and licks the taste of her sister from her lips.

Theo doesn’t look at the dead eyes and open mouths watching her. Doesn’t touch the decaying bones of the monster that shapes itself as a home. She walks the familiar way down the stairs to the front doors that are open, like prison gates parted in a promise of freedom. Walks the well worn path to her car and gets in.

_ Put it in reverse, drive off. Don’t look in the window. Don’t meet Nell’s sad eyes. Don’t meet Mom’s hungry gaze. Don’t let Hill House pull you back. Take a breath, and go. You’ll be back soon. _

* * *


End file.
